He can tell you about a drought four thousand miles away and he does not know the name of the woman at the end of his own road.
That is not a figure of speech. He can tell you about the rainfall, and the politics of it, and why the usual answer will not work there. He has read about it for years and he cares, honestly and properly, and it costs him sleep sometimes.
And there is a house at the end of the lane with a woman in it who has been on her own since the winter before last, and he has waved at her about two hundred times, and he does not know her name.
Here is why I think that happens, and it is not hypocrisy.
Far away is safe to care about. It is enormous and it is impossible and nobody expects a man in a lane to fix a drought, so caring about it costs him nothing but feeling, and feeling is a thing he can afford.
Near is different. Near knows his truck. Near could ask him for something on a Tuesday.
He is sixty-one and he has cared about the whole world and has never once carried a crate up somebody's path.
So let me ask you.
How far away is the furthest person you have helped, and how far is the nearest one you have not?
Read the two words at the end
There is a command in Deuteronomy that most of us can half quote, and the half we drop is the half with the address on it.
There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.Deuteronomy 15:11
In your land.
Not in the world. Not wherever the need is greatest, which is how a modern man instinctively reads it. In your land. The place your feet are.
Deuteronomy 15 puts a geographical limit on the command rather than leaving it unbounded, and the Spirit who gave that law put the nearness in the sentence on purpose, so the compassion you have been sending four thousand miles has never once been the whole of what was asked.
Now let me be careful, because there is a wrong way to hear this and I am not preaching it.
I am not telling you to stop caring about far away. That would be a smaller man's sermon and it would be wrong. What you read about matters and the people in it are real.
And I am not naming any organization to you, and I am not asking you for money, here or anywhere in this piece.
What I am saying is that far away has never asked you to be inconvenienced, and the command was given about the place where you can be.
Deuteronomy 15 uses the word openhanded, which is a description of a hand rather than of a feeling, and the Spirit chose that image, which means two hundred waves at a woman whose name you do not know have been two hundred chances at what the verse actually asked for.
And look at the first line, because it is the honest one and it takes the pressure off.
There will always be poor people in the land. This is not a command to solve it. It is a command to open your hand where you are, in a situation that will not be finished.
Deuteronomy 15 admits the need will outlast the effort and gives the instruction anyway, and the Spirit put that admission in the same verse, so waiting for a solvable problem has never once been the condition for beginning.
Now the turn, and it is measured in yards.
Help the nearest one.
Not the worst off. Not the most deserving, and not the most urgent, because urgency is what has kept you reading instead of walking.
The nearest. The one whose door you pass. The one you have waved at and never named.
Deuteronomy 15 puts in your land right there in the command, and the Spirit was in that limit rather than in any measure of scale, so the small need down the lane has never once been beneath the instruction.
Four thousand miles of caring. Nine hundred yards.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- Far away, you are where all of my caring goes and the command said in your land. Deuteronomy 15 says be openhanded toward the poor and needy in your land, and it put the nearness in the sentence.
- Safety of caring about something nobody expects me to fix, you have cost me two hundred waves and one name I still do not know, and in the name of Jesus you are finished. The Spirit chose the word openhanded, which describes a hand and not a feeling.
- Lord, Deuteronomy 15 says there will always be poor people in the land and gives the command anyway. I am carrying something up somebody's path this week within walking distance, and the nearest one was always the one it meant.
Deuteronomy 15:11
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